Wednesday, 22 August 2012

Doe v Holy See - Oregon Decision

Back in July 2010 I  blogged on the case of Doe v Holy See   which was an attempt in the US to sue the Holy See (AKA:  the Papacy, the Vatican) over the alleged abuse of the Plaintiff by a Catholic Priest.  As I indicated in that Blog and I noted in a  follow up Blog in August 2010  this was going to be hard to do. 

According to reports in other Blogs such as  Vatican Inside  and  Life Site News  the cases against the Holy See have now been thrown out by the Judge.  I have tried to obtain copies of the Judgment but have been told by the Court that because there are other claims still continuing and it is only an interim judgment on an aspect of the overall claim there is no definitive judgment I can refer to to check the reports.

With that "Health Warning" having been given the decision appears to be based on the, not surprising finding by the Judge that

“There are no facts to create a true employment relationship between Ronan [the former priest] and the Holy See,”

2 comments:

Enforcer said...

You should read www.church-insider.com/ 'Scandal and Offence'

Peter said...

Just suppose that it was a business. Would the employment, by the US subsidiary company, have created the link to the overseas parent company?
My thinking is that it is the diocese that would pay social security and pension contributions etc. for the employee and so would be the employer. The case seems to attempt to show that the responsibilities of employer go up the line.
In some respects this might not be unreasonable: think of the US based employees of a bank who might be employed by the subsidiary but receive detailed instructions from the overseas parent. It would however require a party to demonstrate why the role of the employer flowed up the line. I suspect that this would not be possible in this case.